Come to the book launch of the publication GR-02092017 Thursday the 9th of February at Fotogalleriet, Oslo.

In this attempt to do a re-make of the image archive of The Golden Records the curator Silja Leifsdottir has invited 12 co-curators, each nominating a list of artists for the publication. The publication aims to create an anthology that can tell a story about who we are / were and what we want to leave behind us from an contemporary photographic perspective, with the material in The Voyager Golden Records as backdrop.

In this attempt to do a re-make of the image archive of The Golden Records the curator Silja Leifsdottir has invited 12 co-curators, each nominating a list of artists for the publication. The publication aims to create an anthology that can tell a story about who we are / were and what we want to leave behind us from an contemporary photographic perspective, with the material in The Voyager Golden Records as backdrop.

The exhibition and publication is inspired by the Voyager Golden Records, an archive established in 1977 and sent out into space as a coded record, intended as a greeting to extraterrestrial life and/or our future descendants. The record was placed on board the Voyager spacecraft and is currently orbiting in space, not heading toward any particular star, but estimated to pass within 1.6 light-years of the star Gliese 445, currently in the constellation Camelopardalis, in about 40,000 years. The project was directed by NASA in collaboration with the astronomer and writer Carl Sagan and his team. This archive contains a choice of sounds, music, images and greetings in 54 different languages and a speech from the president of USA at that time, Jimmy Carter. All intended to represent the diversity of life and culture on Earth. In addition to this, 118 photographs where selected to fill in the gaps of unique information about our civilization and who we are that the other aspects could not.

The first picture in the Golden Records archive is of a calibration circle. The idea behind it was to start the story with a simple geometrical form, something easy. The diagram on the cover of the record, which is supposed to show how the audio signal is to be reconverted back to video, also ends with a picture of a circle. Thus, if the recipients follow the instruction correctly, the first image they reproduce will be the circle shown on the cover of the record. This will supposedly tell them they are proceeding correctly in addition to confirming the ration of height to width.

Even though there has been put a lot of thought into simplifying things, everything becomes abstract when it is taken out of its own time and context. There are several ways to read the calibration circle, one being that there is only one correct way to see things. But it could also be read as a reminder that it is important to calibrate our own perception when looking at something or someone. Ideally, like a device that made all things universal and timeless, like a pair of special sunglasses.

Grappling with history whilst attempting to map the current also involves forecasting about—and in some respects producing —the future. The responsibility is daunting, because for every story you choose to tell, there is a story that is not told. Not knowing who your audience is, makes it an even bigger challenge, but it is important to continue to do so, because no ones sends a message on a long journey without a positive hope for the future, for it being a future, and an audience.

To the questions of who the Earth’s habitants are, there are of course as many answers as there are people. The power lies with the storyteller, in this case Carl Sagan and NASA, thus the archive becomes, among other things, a view on the world from the eyes of America.